- Biffy Clyro’s new album may sound like sh*t. Just don’t
blame the Scottish indie rockers for it. While recording their latest release,
the quartet have had to deal with raw sewage leaking into their recording studio. As
they lay down tracks for the successor to last year’s double album “Opposites,”
Biffy Clyro have worked in the cozy confines of a renovated farmhouse they have
used for the past decade. Unfortunately, as tends to happen with old farmhouses
that people continue using, a plumbing problem has developed. "We've got a
plumbing problem," frontman Simon Neil said. "There has been raw
sewage leaking through a wall. Its gone from being just gross to actually kinda
dangerous... maybe the new album will be raw sewage influenced. It might end up
sounding like municipal waste." Hey oh…..good one, Simon. "It's time
for us to move on and do something new," he said. "In a way
'Opposites' has shown us what not to do for the next record. It
certainly won't be as expansive or long. It's liberating to know that we
couldn't have made a more epic record than the one we just did, but we don't
want to repeat that again." n put on his serious pants and said the new
album will be less orchestral and dramatic than its predecessor. Leading up to
the recording process, Neil added, he was experimenting with a wide range of
musical styles, including beatboxing, black metal and "stoner-reggae.”
Stoner reggae seems inherently redundant, as the next reggae fan who isn’t a
blazing stoner will be the first. Regardless, Neil said he has 14 songs ready
to record and while not all will eventually make the cut, it’s nice to see a
quality band get right back to work and not rest on its laurels……..
- France sure does know how to open a new art museum. Other
countries might just trot out a few local dignitaries, put up a few balloons
and some bunting and serve cake and punch for people who are wildly overdressed
to look at framed paintings and sculptures whose design they do not understand.
Not the French. No, as a new art museum in southern France opened its doors
for the first time and President Francois Hollande showed up for a publicity
grab, er, to honor an important cultural happening, his thunder was stolen by
an uproarious demonstration by a posse of angry farmers who grandstanded and
ripped the intended purpose of the event in order to draw attention to their
anger over the arrest two days earlier of five of their comrades in northern
France for dismantling part of a huge dairy farm under construction there. The
militant Confederation Paysanne led the protest and added to their show of
force and farce with claims that they detained Hollande's agriculture aide,
Philippe Vincent, for several hours during the inauguration of the museum in
southern France. Hollande's office told a different tale, insisting Vincent met
with farmers but was "absolutely not held" against his will. Sadly,
the farmers did not ride cows onto the scene, nor did they tote pitchforks and
point them menacingly at Hollande. Worse still, there were no arrests and no
comment from Hollande on what went down. All of this stems from the
aforementioned farm in northern France, which Confederation Paysanne opposes on
the grounds that it will hurt small farmers. There are no small farmers, of
course, just smaller points of view on one’s place in the world……….
- New York City is famous for its pizza, its parks and yes,
its rats. Two those three entities are ones that city officials want to keep around….and sadly, the rats are not
one of those two. While Manhattan remains notorious for its rats, these filthy
critters are so resilient that simply efforts to get rid of them have not
worked – so much so that New York actually has places known as rat
reservoirs. These reservoirs are the target of a new city health department
initiative aimed at getting rid of the borough’s rodents. Health Commissioner
Mary T. Bassett announced the plan this week, explaining that a whopping $611,000
from the health department’s budget will go toward the effort. The problems
leading to these unsavory reservoirs have been the obvious: food and water in
plentiful supply. Rat reservoirs are commonly found underneath parks and in
subways, both of which are places tourists tend to frequent. The campaign to
wipe out rogue rats is centered on parts of north Manhattan and the south Bronx
that have chronic rat infestations – and yes, there are actually parts of the
city that have fewer rats than other parts. In several parts of the target
zone, property owners have attempted to expunge the rat population on their own
and have failed. Often, these are low-income communities with poor housing
conditions, Bassett noted. To help facilitate the campaign, the health
department has created an interactive map in which New Yorkers can plug in a
location and see the building’s rodent inspection history. With it being
New York and there being oodles of other, more appealing things to do than go
online and do rat research, one would expect the site to see minimal
traffic……..
- Hey, remember when the Memphis Grizzlies’ overbearing
owner tried to clean house in his team’s entire front office and all but drove
his 50-win head coach to the airport so said coach could fly to Minnesota to
interview for another coaching job? Neither do the rest of us. Memphis Grizzlies coach Dave Joerger was
about to become former Memphis Grizzlies coach Dave Joerger after owner Robert
Pera fired chief executive officer Jason Levien and player personnel director
Stu Lash following a falling out with both executives. Amidst the upheaval, the
Minnesota Timberwolves asked for permission to speak with Joerger about their
vacant head coaching job. His ties to the Timberwolves from earlier in his
coaching career are strong and Joerger appeared to be on the verge of foolishly
fleeing to a frozen tundra of a state to coach a worse team. Yet after
interviewing twice with the Timberwolves, he and the team were unable to come
to an agreement and he returned to Memphis and signed a new contract extension.
As Joerger described it in a news conference to announce the extension,
everything is now copasetic and it’s as if nothing really happened. "There's
a relief for me," Joerger said. "It's like 'Whew,' the owner and I
are married now.' This feels really good and really positive." He said
there is more harmony now within the organization and for a man who went from
assistant coach to head coach, hired a staff and won 50 games despite a myriad
of injuries within a 14-month span, harmony sounds solid. Memphis’ front office
chaos began on May 19, when Levien and Lash were ousted and general manager
Chris Wallace re-assumed power after being elbowed aside by Levien. Pera is
poised to play a larger role in the front office because he signs the checks
and not because he has a damn what he’s doing, yet Joerger claims to be rolling
with it all and ready to move ahead with a smile on his face. Somehow, it just
doesn’t seem right………
- Cynics suck. But at least they’ll eventually pay for it,
eh American
Academy of Neurology? The good folks and noted party animals of the AAN have
released a new study showing that cynical people have a higher likelihood of
developing dementia. “There have been previous studies that showed that people
who were cynical were more likely to die earlier and have other poor health
outcomes, but no one that we could tell ever looked at dementia," said
Anna-Maija Tolppanen, one of the study's authors and a professor at the
University of Eastern Finland. "We have seen some studies that show people
who are more open and optimistic have a lower risk for dementia so we thought this
was a good question to ask.” Cynicism is characterized as a type of chronic anger and
distrust that grows over time and for this study, the researchers examined the
habit of doubting what others say and believing most people seek their own
interests ahead of those of their community. Participants skewed old, with an
average age of 71, and 1,449 took part. They were tested separately for both
cynicism and dementia, with the cynicism test posing statements such as, "Most
people will use somewhat unfair reasons to gain profit or an advantage rather
than lose it"; "I think most people would lie to get ahead"; and
"It is safer to trust nobody." Those who ranked highest in cynicism had
a 2.54 times greater risk of dementia than those with the lowest cynicism
rating. Worse still for the cynics, the study showed that they did not die
sooner than their more optimistic counterparts, meaning they have to stick
around and be miserable for just as long……….
